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Monday, October 1, 2012

Rustic Winter Stew Over Polenta, and Meet Curly the Pekin Duck!

Here we go again! It's time to blog like there's no tomorrow and gain a couple of pounds in the process. Vegan MoFo is here and it waits for nobody, so let's get started!
This year I'm writing three-part MoFo posts:Part 1- The food. Recipes that I've found around the interwebz. Not my recipes. There will be the a Halloweegan post every now and then!Part 2- The entertainment. A brief movie or TV show review about my latest Netflix finds. Mostly streaming. More than reviews they will be recommendations.Part 3- The ducks! We moved to a house where our neighbors are ducks. There are also human neighbors, but I guess you can't have it all.

My first recipe comes via the PPK, and it's a Rustic Winter Stew Over Polenta. Some of the ingredients this recipe calls for are lentils, potatoes, leeks, and thyme - these are some of my favorite ingredients, so choosing this recipe was a no-brainer! This hearty dish will warm your belly without breaking the bank, and the ingredients are easy to find even if you don't have a health food store nearby. Score! You don't have to use polenta if you would rather enjoy this stew over mashed potatoes or rice, but I'm a polenta girl so I stuck with the original. I did throw a couple of uninvited mushrooms in there because they needed to be used up before they grew a fuzzy beard.

I suck at photographing soups and stews, so I stole the styling idea and angle from the PPK. Copycat!

My first TV Show recommendation of Vegan MoFo 2012 is Rosemary and Thyme, a charming British show with two of the most endearing characters I've ever met: Rosemary Boxer and Laura Thyme. These lovely ladies start a gardening business together, and mysterious murders follow them everywhere they go. Here's a tip: don't hire these women to do any gardening work for you or people will start dropping like flies! This is a slow-moving show, but I wasn't expecting high-speed car chases or badass fight scenes from a show about two ladies who work with plants. The scenery is always beautiful, and it makes me want to create a fabulous garden. If only I wasn't so lazy and really bad at gardening.

And now comes the third part of my first Vegan MoFo post of the year... meet Curly!

Say cheeze!

This guy is one of our duck-neighbors that live in a pond near our new place. Curly is the only Pekin duck of the bunch, but he seems to get along with all the mallards. Because he's the only white-feathered dude and he sticks out like sore thumb, I take more pictures of Curly than all the other ducks. Why do we call him Curly? I'll let his tail feathers explain that:

Curly tail!

That's it! A bit discombobulated, maybe, but the first post is done. Phew! Tomorrow's recipe is going to blow your mind - I'm still recovering from the shock! See you tomorrow! :)

Rivvvvvvveeeerrrrr! I've missed you, lady! 1) That stew looks fantastic (anything with leeks is delicious!), 2) the show sounds adorbs.....as soon as I finish Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and the United States of Tara, I should check it out, and 3) CURLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG!